


Green Glass and Cheap Lies

by Newtavore



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Injury, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Major Character Injury, References to Addiction, [All Mentioned]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rickgrets.</p><p>[AKA: Morty gets injured and Rick decides things need to change.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Glass and Cheap Lies

**Author's Note:**

> another thing half-inspired by Halsey's Gasoline. That's somehow my go-to Rick song now. Lord help me.

The alcohol burns on the way down, scorching his numb tongue and charring his throat and ripping apart the lining of his stomach, but it’s nothing compared to the weight lifting off his shoulders, his mind. 

 

Tonight is a bad night. 

 

His flask is nearly empty, so he upends the last of it into his open mouth and fetches the entire fucking bottle of the shit currently replacing his blood one drop at a time, the liquid inside casting a sickly green glow over his pallid skin. Tonight is a whole-bottle night. Tonight is a multiple-bottle night. His cold fingers wrap around the neck of the colder glass and pull it close, against his chest. 

 

Tonight is a hug-the-bottle-like-a-lover night. 

 

Morty isn’t going to bother him- the kid is asleep, curled up in a wounded ball in an alien hospital room, regrowing his entire fucking spleen after some dead-man-walking had shot it out of him. Rick stares down at the bottle in his grasp and for a split second the green bleeds red, dripping from his hands in never ending rivers, staining his white lab coat and soaking into the leather of his shoes. 

 

_ He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.  _

 

Drink more. The alcohol burns on the way down, charring his scorched tongue and numbing his throat and settling like glass shards in his churning stomach, but it’s nothing compared to what Morty must have felt, laying on the dirty metal floor of a strange ship, bleeding out. Nothing to what he must have felt, watching himself fucking  _ die _ , slowly, painfully, fully aware but entirely helpless to stop the inevitable. 

 

Drink more. 

 

Drink until everything stops. 

 

Drink until he can no longer feel the pressing fingers of guilt closing tight around his neck, throttling him till he can hardly suck in labored, panicked breaths, the weight of  _ liability _ laying heavy and solid over his bowed shoulders. Drink until he can see nothing but swirls and stars on the lids of his closed eyes, till his hands are no longer stained with the blood of his innocent, idiot grandson who’d looked up at him with glassy eyes and a dumb smile and said  _ I don’t blame you _ -

 

Drink until nothing but science makes sense. 

 

Rick sprawls out over an uncomfortable chair in the garage, staring blankly at the bottle- already half empty. How can something  _ hurt _ so goddamn much that half a bottle of unfiltered Eaxirdiian alcohol can’t even dull the pain? How can something that doesn’t even fucking  _ affect him _ hurt so, so goddamn much? 

He trembles, leaning forward until his forehead touches cool glass, chest aching as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus on nothing but prime numbers and the sharp stab of alcohol, twisting in his stomach. 2357. 2371. 2377. 2381. 2383. Drink, swallow, don’t throw up. 2389. 2391. Drink, swallow, suck in a desperate gasp of air as blood smears over his hands and the floor and his shoes and Morty smiles up at him with that dumb, stupid puppy smile and says  _ I don’t blame you _ \- 

 

The shattering of glass startles him and he stares down at his own hands, one outstretched, the bottle- empty now- nothing but a rain of green crystal across the room, broken into a million infinitesimally tiny pieces. Irreparable. 

 

Irreparable. 

 

Irreparable. 

 

“He’s fine,” he says, choking on bile as he stands, the world around him spinning; there’s another bottle in his desk, and each step feels like a thousand, muscles aching and back sore, limbs shaking with effort, “He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.”

 

This isn’t even the first injury. This isn’t even the closest call. Why this time? Why now? Rick fucking Sanchez doesn’t fucking care about  _ anyone _ , much less a Morty- why can he  _ not stop shaking _ -?

 

He tips the bottle and chugs a quarter of it in one go, the shit burning like gasoline, leaving a trail of fire from his lips to his gut. He doesn’t fucking care. He’s doesn’t care about anything. He’s a machine, a robot, emotionless and cruel and uncaring, running on alcohol like cars run on fuel, his body nothing but a fleshy prison for the calculating, inhuman mind trapped inside him. He doesn’t fucking care about anything. 

 

_ I don’t blame you- _

 

The kid’s just another Morty. Just another fucking Morty. 

 

He squeezes his eyes shut again, leaning heavily against the cabinet as he takes another swig, body sagging as he lets out an odd, unfamiliar sound. 

 

_ I don’t blame you _ -

 

He sucks in another ragged gasp and goes rigid, choking on his own emotions as they all mutiny at once- pain, anger, fear, regret, love, a maelstrom of feeling, a fucking hurricane of shit he’s always shoved away. Everything  _ hurts _ , and every time he closes his eyes all he can see is the bloodstained curls pasted to Morty’s wide forehead, the boy’s doe-soft green eyes glazed over and unfocused, that dumb motherfucking smile spreading across his goddamn face as he reaches out to Rick, placing one small hand right up against his chest and leaving a handprint on the white fabric of his lab coat-

 

_ I don’t blame you _ . 

 

“I blame me,” he says, voice hoarse, knees giving out as he slides slowly to the floor, nothing but a sad, huddled mess of stick-thin limbs and regret, “I fucking blame me, you piece of shit.”

 

He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine. 

 

_ But he almost wasn’t _ . 

 

He almost fucking died and it’s as much Rick’s fault as if he held the gun his own goddamn self. As much his fault as if he’d pressed the gun to Morty’s stomach and pulled the trigger, staring down at him as he bled out over the dirty, greasy metal floor. 

 

Mouth dry, he struggles to his knees, then to his feet, everything around him swimming dizzily as he takes uneven, stumbling steps over to the sink. He keeps expecting to open his eyes and sit up from wherever uncomfortable, stupid place he’d managed to drink himself into oblivion this time, keeps expecting this to be a stupid, stupid dream, but it’s not. He can’t wake up- he’s already awake, and he has to face the fucking consequences of his actions for once in his miserable, pathetic life. 

 

Hands shaking, he tips the bottle- not over his mouth this time, but into the sink. 

 

It hurts, watching the hundred-credit bottle of Eaxirdiian liquor spin down the drain, but the ache is eclipsed by the pain he feels when he looks down at his hands and sees them smeared in oxygen-reddened blood. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as a laser blast to the gut, doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as being held hostage and watching as your _ dumbass, piece of shit grandfather _ purposely pisses off your captors, he’s sure. Doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as staring down at the one person who can prompt the impossible from Rick fucking Sanchez, and watching as he bleeds out across the plating of an unnamed, unimportant piece of shit space ship in the middle of some boondock asteroid field. 

 

He swallows, throat aching. He keeps pouring till the bottle’s empty. 

 

_ I’m sorry Rick _ . 

 

The glass slams down hard enough to shatter, and he  _ howls _ , whirling around the garage like a possessed hurricane, body spinning from one stash to the other. Bottle after bottle join the fragmented remains of their brethren in the stainless steel sink; he’s not sure what the alien intoxicants are going to do to Beth’s drains, nor does he particularly care. 

 

He’s sure he’ll regret this in the morning, when the withdrawal sets in. He’s sure tomorrow will roll around and his resolve will dim, then vanish altogether as the memories and the pain all hit him at once. He’s sure sobriety will show itself to be overrated once more and he’ll fall back off the wagon, rolling in the dirt with the rest of his fellow addicts. 

 

None of that matters now. Now, all he can think about is blood and dumb smiles and soft, hazy voices saying  _ I don’t blame you _ over and over and over, and never has he thought that such a benign statement could haunt him so thoroughly. 

 

_ I’m sorry Rick _ . 

 

Another ragged sound escapes him, a cough of pain, psychosomatic and incurable; he lets his body puddle to the floor and lays on his back amidst the wreckage of his workshop, Morty’s voice ringing in his head. 

 

_ I don’t blame you. I’m sorry Rick. I love you, Grandpa. _

 

He retches, curling in on himself as his stomach churns, fingers digging into his scalp. This is it. He’s done. Something needs to change- and that something needs to be him. 

 

Morty is fine. Morty is alive, this time, but this isn’t the first time, it won’t be the last, and it won’t be the worst. His goddamn alcohol poisoned limbs had been too slow, too shaky, too unsure to take the shot that would have saved his grandson all the pain in the world, and his addled brain almost cost the boy his life. Something needs to change, and that something… it has to be him. 

 

...For Morty’s sake.

 


End file.
